On the stairs a fall can easily result in a serious injury or even death. Among seniors the chance of an injury is much higher and often recovering from an injury is much more difficult, so preventing falls is essential for this age group. One way to prevent falls is to avoid the stairs, but for a lot of people, this isn't really a viable solution. Instead a stair lift can be used, which allows full and safe use of the stairs.



Stair lifts are a type of medical lifting aid. It is designed to safely transport a person between floors. Using a chair or small platform, which is called a perch, the individual is carried up the stairs. A track system is used that in most cases will be attached to the steps. If the staircase is exceptionally narrow or if it is curved, then the track might be instead attached to the wall.

For straight staircases a stair lift is rather easy to install and many homeowners choose to do it themselves. Several of the more popular lifts are designed in a manner that allows them to be installed in only a few hours using normal everyday tools. While a lot of people do decide to do the installation on their own, most companies also offer a professional service that can come to your home and set it up.

A straight staircase is easy to outfit with a stair lift, but curved staircases present several obstacles that make stair lifts for curved staircase very expensive. The biggest obstacle is that there is no uniform standard that is used when building a curved staircase.

Since there is no uniform standard to how a curved staircase is built, it is necessary for a curved stair lift to be custom built. In order to evaluate the staircase and even give you an estimate the manufacturer will have to come to your home. It can then usually take at least a month to build the lift and usually a few weeks to get it installed.

Often it will take over two months to have one of these lifts installed and they will cost at least $10,000 more than a straight stair lift. There are some companies that offer discount curved stair lifts, but you should be exceptionally careful. Many of these companies will take an old stair lift track and re-bend it to fit your staircase. This greatly weakens the track and can be very dangerous. The cost is a good indicator that a company is doing this, but the length of the warranty usually also gives this away. A curved stair lift company that uses this method will usually only offer a short warranty, usually only around a year or less. This is a great indication that the curved stair lift company is re-bending their tracks.

Since a curved stair lift costs so much and takes so long to install, a residential elevator becomes an affordable option. One of the other downsides to a curved stair lift is that it will only work on an identical staircase. This means that unless you can find someone who has an exact match, you will not be able to sell it for very much. This results in you taking a loss on your curved stair lift as soon as you buy it.

For a straight staircase, a stair lift is an affordable alternative to an elevator, but for curved staircase, you are sometimes better off getting an elevator or, if your staircase permits it, installing two straight stair lifts.